Essays Archive - Page 28 of 131

Art on Her Mind

bell hooks’s theory of beauty in the everyday

February 14, 2022 • by Monika Gehlawat

bell hooks’s contributions to feminist thought and race politics are widely known, as are her rigorous theoretical works and academic scholarship. While I have read and learned much from her art and political criticism, what has moved me most recently are hooks’s personal reflections on the quotidian spaces of Black ...

Interviews

Walking This Road Together

A conversation with historian Linda Hirshman about interracial alliances, social movements, and her new book, The Color of Abolition: How a Printer, a Prophet, and a Contessa Moved a Nation

February 9, 2022 • by Linda Hirshman and Claire Potter

Linda Hirshman is a lawyer and cultural historian whose book The Color of Abolition: How a Printer, a Prophet, and a Contessa Moved a Nation, is making its debut this week. Linda, a historian of social movements who is also the author of books about the feminist and gay rights ...

History

The Color of Abolition

Linda Hirshman introduces her new book on Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Maria Weston Chapman

February 9, 2022 • by Linda Hirshman

I was looking for the mechanics of activism—the meetings, the speeches, the broadsides, the litigation—for my analysis. And Garrison and Douglass were both central to the mechanics of activism. Their alliance fueled critical years of the movement, and their breakup affected the direction of the movement profoundly. This was the ...

Past Present

The History of Emoji

Past Present Podcast, Episode 312

February 9, 2022 • by Nicole Hemmer, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela and Neil J. Young

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: The Unicode Consortium has released dozens of new emoji, including a pregnant man, a melting face, and multiple new family configurations. Natalia referred to this Atlantic essay and to this BBC piece, and Niki to this essay on Science Friday. In ...

Literature

Decolonizing Daniel Defoe

How Black lives matter in A Journal of the Plague Year

February 9, 2022 • by Anna Neill

It isn’t hard to see why A Journal of the Plague Year has enjoyed renewed attention in recent times. But to invoke it without considering Defoe’s support for British imperialism and the expanding Atlantic slave trade is to make literary history complicit with colonial and racial injustice....

Economy

A Year of Wasted Opportunity

How America’s largest corporations profited from the American Rescue Plan Act

February 8, 2022 • by Kasia Tarczynska

In 2021, when small businesses were still closing en masse and many were unable to afford even rent, large corporations across the country got billions of dollars in tax breaks and other public support. It was a year defined by massive economic development subsidy packages. ...

Technology

The Chip Wars Heat Up

Chips with a side of CHIPS

February 7, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

"...there’s something much bigger at work here: The Chip Wars, as I’ve dubbed them, are heating up, and revealing some of the tensions between national needs and extraction from local communities."...

Europe & Central Asia

What’s at Stake in Ukraine

“If you want peace, prepare for war”

February 2, 2022 • by Mariia Shynkarenko

Thus, the potential occupation of Ukraine should not be seen as a local affair, nor should the country be viewed as a strategic sacrifice to appease Putin’s fears about NATO. Instead, it should be seen as a warning of how far he can push his might, if not properly restrained. ...

Activism

Why Activists Matter to Constitutional Change

Beyond textual loopholes: the case of the Thirteenth Amendment

February 2, 2022 • by Sam Klug

n the immediate aftermath of the Thirteenth Amendment’s passage, African American activists, Reconstruction legislators, and the formerly enslaved initially hoped it would be broadly applied. ...

Why Activists Matter to Constitutional Change

Economy

The Rural Tax Credit Hustle

Beware investment firms pitching themselves as the saviors of rural America

February 2, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

The Kentucky proposal would give credits against insurance premium taxes to corporations who provide funds to investment firms that then turn around and invest money in smaller businesses in rural Kentucky. If it seems like that’s needlessly complicated, well, it is. ...

Literature

Literary Imperialism and Scenes of High Melodrama

When BIPOC and queer writers defy minimalism

February 1, 2022 • by Torsa Ghosal

The term melodrama is a value judgment—and as such, it can be careless. ...

Literary Imperialism and Scenes of High Melodrama

Uncategorized

For Want of Wild Beasts

For many in Eastern Europe, prison was the hallmark of Communism. Today, the United States is experiencing its own carceral society. What can be learnt from this comparison and can we redefine the term “political prisoner”?

February 1, 2022 • by Reginald Dwayne Betts, Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, Irena Grudzińska-Gross and Marci Shore

How do we understand both the uses and disadvantages of thinking across time and space? How do we negotiate the fact that in any biography or historical event, there are both elements that are unique, and elements that are universal? For me, these questions belonged to a larger question: namely, ...

Essays

Art on Her Mind

bell hooks’s theory of beauty in the everyday

Walking This Road Together

A conversation with historian Linda Hirshman about interracial alliances, social movements, and her new book, The Color of Abolition: How a Printer, a Prophet, and a Contessa Moved a Nation

The Color of Abolition

Linda Hirshman introduces her new book on Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Maria Weston Chapman

The History of Emoji

Past Present Podcast, Episode 312

Decolonizing Daniel Defoe

How Black lives matter in A Journal of the Plague Year

A Year of Wasted Opportunity

How America’s largest corporations profited from the American Rescue Plan Act

The Chip Wars Heat Up

Chips with a side of CHIPS

What’s at Stake in Ukraine

“If you want peace, prepare for war”

Why Activists Matter to Constitutional Change

Beyond textual loopholes: the case of the Thirteenth Amendment

The Rural Tax Credit Hustle

Beware investment firms pitching themselves as the saviors of rural America

Literary Imperialism and Scenes of High Melodrama

When BIPOC and queer writers defy minimalism

For Want of Wild Beasts

For many in Eastern Europe, prison was the hallmark of Communism. Today, the United States is experiencing its own carceral society. What can be learnt from this comparison and can we redefine the term “political prisoner”?

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